Arguably, the incandescent political damage done by the phone hacking has savaged the Prime Minister’s brand. Any scandal that needs to propel a failing opposition leader into a favourable light requires emergency PR council. Alas, Ed Milliband isn’t free to dance on the Prime Minister’s misfortune because he too is aided by an ex News International journalist.

Matthew Freud is perhaps one player who has even more to lose. I’ve been operating a PR company breathing the same oxygen as Matthew, but he’s been on an impressive mission and built a far bigger empire. Make no mistake, the omnipresent Freud, eminence grise, is held on high by the phantom in the wings. The PR industry gives credence to the fact that he is the country’s most powerful PR broker. His influence, aided by his marriage to the Murdoch family and his close friendship with Rebekah Brooks, simply cannot be ignored. He sits in the middle of the powerful circle to the advantage of many of his clients.

Why not? Isn’t that what every powerful PR broker has done since the birth of public relations? After all, Freud is related to Edward Bernays, the grandfather of spin. Certainly legend has it that if Matthew was involved on any company account, things happened. Embellishing the corporate Freudian myth became a brilliant pitching device and a pivotal instrument for his empire. Yet now, many are questioning whether this leverage is under threat.

It looks like his desire to be influential in political power has been thwarted, and of course so has Murdoch’s. Suddenly it is possible to ask whether The Sun ever did win an election. Has the spell been broken?

It seems, now, that the newspapers’ influence might be waning generally and that News Corporation’s political clout is actually pretty limited – as the sacrifices made in the name of BSkyB would prove. What is a 168 year old newspaper worth in the face of television’s reach? Not a lot, apparently.

As the old Fleet Street vet Roy Greenslade commented in his blog: “The press is not, and probably never has been, as powerful an agent as politicians seem to believe. On the other hand, it is certainly not as neutral and lacking in influence as proprietors tend to say.”

Politicians are vain and take themselves seriously, they like reading about themselves. The papers are merely convenient scapegoats for the moment that parties or policies fail.

Of course recent events will usher in a change in the way the relationship between Murdoch and the political class works. His perceived brand power will now be playing against him; folk are uncomfortable about a figure that can be portrayed as an over-mighty influence on political affairs. It is apparent that, for the time being, he will actually be unable to wield the power it is claimed he is able to exercise. For this reason, Miliband has ostentatiously burned his bridges with the Murdoch press. This strategy holds the advantage of leaving him looking like a clean man fighting a great power, but without significant electoral risk.

So will Freud’s prestige and standing be overshadowed by the current calamities? Will his legendary parties still arouse and beguile? The Freudian metonymy is disfigured; indisputably, the political class is under pressure to distance itself from the pandemonium and any related individuals. The political class is pragmatic, hardnosed and commonsensical and will steer clear of negative ink and public disdain.

The Freudian cult faces a huge challenge and Freud’s business dexterity will be something to watch. Matthew is a fearless, creative and audacious networker with considerable clout, but his capacity to manoeuvre and redirect his powers will be paramount if his brand is to survive the events of the last 10 days. I guess he is ahead of the curve and plans to reshape his brand persona in the coming months. Whatever; the new world order of PR is upon us.

UPDATE

With the resignation this morning of Rebekah Brooks, it looks like Murdoch is beginning to kick emotional ties into touch. What bearing this will have on Matthew Freud remains to be seen.

This was a time when mobile phones were nothing more than a twinkle in the eye of the Star Trek props department and folk depended on land lines. A time when many, many celebrities chose to make themselves ex-directory, their number only available to friends, to protect their privacy.

The journalist stalking Elphick began to pester his quarry at home, however. Somehow his private number had been made public. On questioning the journalist after a liquid lunch (the best time in the PR game to probe your opponent about these sorts of matters), he guffawed. “Mate, we have our ways,” he said, “and 35 quid will get you a snitch in the GPO only too happy to provide an ex-directory number!”

Michael ascended to the great Green Room in the sky in 2002, and the investigations man has too long since shuffled off this mortal coil, but the only thing to have changed since then is the size, and ease of use, of the technology.

In the 21st century, the dark art of phone hacking has on many occasions required a helping nudge from a contact in a mobile phone company. Of course, there are many Z listers willing to give out a mobile at the drop of a hat. Others, the ones with more to lose, are much more careful.

Here’s a question that needs to be asked loudly and publicly: how did the so-called hackers in the news at the moment get the prime numbers? The current hacking soap opera has a long way to run, I’d say – I can’t believe that the numbers of the 7/7 victims were all that easy to obtain.

Who inside the mobile companies gave the News of the World a helping hand and what was their price? I hope, for their sake, that the mobile carriers have cut out the cancerous staff at the heart of their brands because there’s every chance that the toxic overspill surrounding the scandal could hurt them too if they have not.

It seems clear from the events of recent days, especially the confusion and contradictory messages from the News International camp, that the company was struggling to thwart the meltdown of the brand and counter the opprobrium.

The move to close the paper, and thereby protect the brand, took my breath away. As a veteran voyeur, I’ve seen some of the extraordinary events Murdoch’s committed in Fleet Street, yet I am unable to work out if this one is a masterstroke or a gesture of panic. I can only suggest that this was a ruthless, brutal and cynical publicity stunt.

Unfortunately, the action some see as an attempt to put a lid back on the box has failed, because the lid perished some time ago. The tactic used is obtuse. A million monkeys at a million typewriters might produce a weekly edition of the News of the World, but one orangutan with severe head trauma could come up with a better PR strategy.

Of course there is another scenario in the slow cooker. It’s likely that the News of the World will be revived under the new name of “Sunday Sun” or “Sun on Sunday”, without the accompanying resignation of Mrs Brooks and other executives. In which case it’s a publicity stunt, pure and simple. And what everyone misses is that the people who started this – the advertisers, the British Legion, the readers – don’t want the brand killed off. They want the scalps of the executives. They want to see those responsible hung out to dry. If it is reborn and rebranded, the rabid bloodlust will return.

Teflon-skinned executives have survived the first shock waves. Surprisingly even Max Clifford has offered emollient words in defence of Rebekah Brooks, but somehow this scandal is more serious; it smells different. For starters it’s the end of the celebrated Britsh Sunday tabloid press. The likes of John Terry, Wayne Rooney and the various arrogant cabal of misbehaving showbiz celebrities will not be pursued in the same way. The tabloid life force has been castrated.

I guess I’ve had the last Friday or Saturday call from a triumphant journalist who thinks he’s nailed one of my misbehaving clients. The ramifications of the closure include the end of the cavalier, buccaneering scribbler, hellbent on making a dent in a celebrity brand.

No more unarmed combat, no more late night worry. No more long Sundays working out how to spin a positive Monday morning news agenda. It’s the end of having to creatively attempt to turn a disaster into an opportunity. I will miss the banter, stress and frantic mind-sapping manoeuvres.

The big question is, will competing titles have the resources to exploit the space left by the News of the World? The spirit will be willing but the financial resources are weak. Smug PR folk might be rubbing their hands with glee at the onset of a gentler age, but those that do miss the point. It’s a bad day for us all.

Could the closure precipitate something worse? Will we see a pack of cards tumbling into an Escher Tower of Babel? Jerry Seinfeld said people who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to. The American comic misses the point. Over the last few years the News Of the World has been a pretty damn good title. I have a number of good friends who worked there. It’s an outrage that any of them have lost their jobs for mistakes made by previous regimes. The ongoing PR meltdown will be be expedited by these wronged hacks, seeking revenge for being treated like some dumb sacrifices, mere pawns in a corporate masterplan.

So watch this space. There are plenty more episodes left in this hot new mini series.

Did anyone know the true value of MySpace? More pertinently, does anyone recall the MySpace hype? Current PR hot air suggests that other media darlings will crash and burn. The huge corporate guerrillas fail to see true value because they do not understand that many of the channels actually grow, flourish and survive on their own authenticity.

So often, many pay top dollar for hype and PR muscle to inflate the market, failing to comprehend the strength of the tool they are using. Just think about reality TV, or even brands like GaGa or Cheryl Cole. They are all huge money spinners, wanted and adored for a fleeting moment in time. The market demands beautiful people with compelling narratives. However, they all take for granted the most important factor; the audience.

MySpace grew organically because it delivered value for people making music. It attracted powerful muso communities naturally grown around specific genres of music. Before it hit the dizzy heights of 300m users, it allowed ‘would be’ rock and pop stars to develop their sound and community to help market and monetise the effort in a micro way.

The big record label A&R men even bought into their own hype. Countless execs sacrificed their expense accounts and stayed at home, trawling the site for the next big thing. We were lead to believe that so many artists were discovered on MySpace -Lily Allen and Katy Perry for example – but was it true? Perhaps it’s more truthful to suggest press teams used the story mechanic to excite jaded music scribblers who had all jumped on the bandwagon eager to find a new way to sell. Remember Sandi Thom? Me neither…

The social bubble is still inflating and, despite the MySpace wake up call, the hype merchants are at it again. Justin Timberlake has apparently teamed up with a US advertising agency to help MySpace regain its dominance. Hey, when in need chuck a celebrity into the mix and let the cycle begin once again.

So there you have it – digital holy grails need to be fit to survive and usually turn to a brilliant propaganda machine to help them construct a ferocious story engine. All they need to do then is pray that it will have a seductive, hypnotic and anaesthetic effect and will draw the people inexorably in.

The truth is dismal, slow and unsexy in this world of RSS feeds and instant Twitter fixes and papers are so desperate to keep up that the truth is the first thing to suffer.

Look at this article about Steven Gerrard, in which the facts have been played fast and loose in a bid to create a ’story’. The popular news cycle is about soap opera now, not truth. We are living in a world where conspiracy theorists hold the high ground and we are so swamped with untruth, half truth and scurrilous supposition that newspapers or enemies of a brand (from the England team to Marmite) can feed whatever vicious fluff they like into the rumour mill and produce a story – such as this one about Gerrard and Terry, which skates close to a possible truth (in this case, possible enmity between Terry and Gerrard over the England captaincy) – that it is easy to believe.

It’s that ease that’s the problem; we’re all over-pressed with news and ideas on a daily basis to the extent that it’s easy to believe the spurious things that SOUND like they should be true. We need to get smart to it, however, if we’re ever to break the habit. We need to ask questions rather than let overworked and/or untrustworthy sources supply us with processed bullshit. The brand destabilisation that a well ground rumour mill can create needs able publicists on hand to counter the fug of lies and half truths that litter the Internet. All this has lead to the media having to sternly deny all of the rumours about Gerrard and Terry’s enmity this morning, as the FA is collapsing under the weight of rumour.

It’s probable that the truth about many things is suppressed; what we need is to be looking under the right stones. People want compelling soaps, though. They want sexy stories, not grubby searching. At the heart of it, it seems likely that they don’t want to go looking for the truth, as they suspect they aren’t going to like what they find.

Essentially, Ross is no longer the whipping boy of the BBC haters and his departure will more than likely lead to new and exciting pastures for him. He’s a potent personality. Without him, however, what big names does the BBC have? And what big names are they likely to be able to get?

The pressure of a public service agenda in a commercial world is likely to weigh heavy on the shoulders of the corporation – if they cannot nurture talent like Ross in competition with the commercial sector, they’re in serious trouble. If the BBC can’t set the agenda, they will be running around like headless chickens whilst the Mail gloats and the Murdochs rub their hands together gleefully.

His performance was a masterstroke, however – a blend of careful honesty and equally careful image management. Coulson came across as forthright and honest – and he looked relaxed in a suit that could easily have graced the pages of GQ. Importantly, he did not battle the MPs he was facing but was carefully compliant.

There’s no doubt that he knows not to make himself the story – he kept his personality in the background and presented the facts as he saw them. It was abundantly clear, from this appearance, that he has been a major influence on the Tory front bench and on David Cameron in particular. Watching him conducting himself told us much about how he is working with the Tories.

He was as impressive as Alastair Campbell used to be in the same role for Tony Blair, although he cuts a very different dash from Campbell. Where Campbell was more of a Nobby Stiles, Coulson comes across as something of a Cardinal Richelieu, albeit a Richelieu who is prepared to admit his mistakes, which is more than can be said for some MPs.

But would he rather be the PR man for a likely future Prime Minister or to have remained in the editor’s chair at the News of the World? He fell on his sword for the sake of the Murdoch empire in 2007 after the phone tapping scandal involving rogue agents, having carefully built a career in journalism. I would imagine that there’s still a sense of loss about that lurking in the carefully polished depths.

At a time when Sunday newspapers are under ever greater pressure to land scoops – whatever the method and consequence – I imagine Coulson’s safe with the Tories for now, especially since he handled himself so effectively under pressure in front of the Commons select committee and given that his media management of the Tories has, on the whole, been equally effective. He certainly proved he’s an asset to David Cameron in front of the select committee and despite calls for his resignation, I would suggest that he’s not likely to leave this job at present.